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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

ulia Aoki, volunteer coordinator for the Powell Street Festival.

Photograph by: Glenn Baglo
, Vancouver Sun

VANCOUVER — Unlike other festivals that strive to be bigger every year, the Powell Street Festival works on getting better.

Now in its 33rd year, the annual festival of Japanese Canadian culture isn’t about showcasing mass market entertainment and attracting mega-crowds. Instead, it focuses on uniqueness, featuring local arts and performance groups. It’s been described as a homecoming that prides itself on being inclusive to all, regardless of their ethnicity, sexual orientation or class.

“I know it seems a cliché, but the Powell Street Festival has something for everyone,” said Miko Hoffman, the festival’s immediate past general manager.

“It has such a lovely atmosphere. I think it’s kind of rare, a festival that has professional programming mixed with community groups. We have really strong links to the artistic community — both Japanese Canadian and the bigger Vancouver community.”

Hoffman, now the executive director of the National Nikkei Museum and Heritage Centre in Burnaby, literally grew up with the festival.

She’s 35 years old and can remember being taken to the festival as a youngster by her parents. The child of a Japanese American mother and Jewish American father who emigrated north to Canada, Hoffman said her first memories of the festival are of helping out collecting garbage. The bond that she’s developed is so strong that she’ll be back again this year as a volunteer.

“I think the festival speaks to people on different levels,” Hoffman said. “On the community level, lots of Japanese Canadian groups come together. It’s just about celebrating the culture and heritage.”

The festival dates back to 1977. The occasion for the first one was the centennial of the arrival of the first Japanese immigrant to Canada: Manzo Nagano, who boarded a ship in Yokohama with no idea where it was headed. He ended up in Victoria.

After Nagano’s arrival, the Japanese Canadian community grew in the 1930s to about 22,000, almost all of it in the coastal areas of B.C. But the events of 1942 were to have a devastating effect on them.

The internment of Canadians of Japanese ancestry in response to Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, was only the beginning. The federal government sold their homes and businesses without their consent and used the money to pay for their own internment. After the Second World War ended, they were forbidden from returning to Vancouver and other coastal spots until 1949. The dispersal destroyed the physical centre of the community which was called Nihonmachi, or Japantown, an area in and around Powell Street in what is now the Downtown Eastside.

In part, holding the annual festival in Oppenheimer Park in what was once the largest Japanese Canadian community in the country was a way to bring together what had been torn apart.

But this year, the festival is having to cope with a big change. With Oppenheimer Park out of commission because of a major renovation, the festival is moving for a year to Woodland Park off Commercial Drive.

Organizers are hoping to attract enough volunteers and meet the festival’s annual attendance of about 15,000.

Like Hoffman, Julia Aoki is also part of a younger generation drawn to the festival. Aoki, 28, is different in that she doesn’t have a direct family connection to internment: Her father was a Japanese immigrant and her mother, a Canadian of Ukrainian ancestry.

Growing up in the suburbs in North Delta, Aoki felt she lacked a sense of identity. She found it through the festival. First it was by becoming involved in a writers’ workshop in 2003, then she became volunteer coordinator. This year will be her third stint coordinating about 150 volunteers for the festival on Saturday and Sunday.

“Initially, it was something I went looking for,” Aoki said about her search for identity.

“Five years later, I realized that it was the process of being involved in the festival that gave me that sense of community. It’s about being involved and developing relationships.”

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